Welcome to our collection of quotes by Sitting Bull
Wikipedia Summary for Sitting Bull
Sitting Bull (Lakota: Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake [tˣaˈtˣə̃ka ˈi.jɔtakɛ]; c. 1831 – December 15, 1890) was a Hunkpapa Lakota leader who led his people during years of resistance against United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.
Before the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Sitting Bull had a vision in which he saw many soldiers, "as thick as grasshoppers," falling upside down into the Lakota camp, which his people took as a foreshadowing of a major victory in which many soldiers would be killed. About three weeks later, the confederated Lakota tribes with the Northern Cheyenne defeated the 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer on June 25, 1876, annihilating Custer's battalion and seeming to bear out Sitting Bull's prophetic vision.
Sitting Bull's leadership inspired his people to a major victory. In response, the U.S. government sent thousands more soldiers to the area, forcing many of the Lakota to surrender over the next year. Sitting Bull refused to surrender, and in May 1877, he led his band north to Wood Mountain, North-Western Territory (now Saskatchewan). He remained there until 1881, at which time he and most of his band returned to U.S. territory and surrendered to U.S. forces.
After working as a performer with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, Sitting Bull returned to the Standing Rock Agency in South Dakota. Due to fears that he would use his influence to support the Ghost Dance movement, Indian Service agent James McLaughlin at Fort Yates ordered his arrest. During an ensuing struggle between Sitting Bull's followers and the agency police, Sitting Bull was shot in the side and head by Standing Rock policemen Lieutenant Bull Head (Tatankapah, Lakota: Tȟatȟáŋka Pȟá) and Red Tomahawk (Marcelus Chankpidutah, Lakota: Čhaŋȟpí Dúta), after the police were fired upon by Sitting Bull's supporters. His body was taken to nearby Fort Yates for burial. In 1953, his Lakota family exhumed what were believed to be his remains, reburying them near Mobridge, South Dakota, near his birthplace.
As individual fingers we can easily be broken, but all together we make a mighty fist.
I have killed, robbed, and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace.
Longer Version:
I have killed, robbed, and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace. They are medicine, and I would eventually die a lingering death. I had rather die on the field of battle.
The life my people want is a life of freedom. I have seen nothing that a white man has, houses or railways or clothing or food, that is as good as the right to move in the open country and live in our fashion.
I do not wish to be shut up in a corral. All agency Indians I have seen are worthless. They are neither red warriors nor white farmers. They are neither wolf nor dog.
Go back home where you came from. This country is mine, and I intend to stay here and to raise this country full of grown people.
What does it matter how long I pray, so long as my prayers are answered?
Our religion seems foolish to you, but so does yours to me. The Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians and the Catholics all have a different God. Why cannot we have one of our own?
Inside of me there are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.
I know Great Spirit is looking down upon me from above, and will hear what I say.
God made me an Indian.
Longer Version:
God made me an Indian, but not a reservation Indian.
If a man loses anything and goes back and looks carefully for it, he will find it.
If I agree to dispose of any part of our land to the white people I would feel guilty of taking food away from our children's mouths, and I do not wish to be that mean.
What treaty have the Sioux made with the white man that we have broken? Not one. What treaty have the white man ever made with us that they have kept? Not one.
It is through this mysterious power that we too have our being, and we therefore yield to our neighbors, even to our animal neighbors, the same right as ourselves to inhabit this vast land.
He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other different desires.
I will remain what I am until I die, a hunter, and when there are no buffalo or other game I will send my children to hunt and live on prairie, for where an Indian is shut up in one place his body becomes weak.
A cold wind blew on the prairie on the day the last buffalo fell. A death wind for my people.
Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love.
Longer Version:
Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!
I want to tell you that if the Great Spirit had chosen anyone to be the chief of this country, it is myself.
Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit.
Longer Version:
Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows. Now we are poor but we are free. No white man controls our footsteps. If we must die, we die defending our rights.
Now that we are poor, we are free. No white man controls our footsteps.
Therefore, I do not wish to consider any proposition to cede any portion of our tribal holdings to the Great Father.
There are things they tell us that sound good to hear, but when they have accomplished their purpose they will go home and will not try to fulfill our agreements with them.
What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one.
If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man, he would have made me so in the first place.
Longer Version:
If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans, and in my heart he put other and different desires. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.
The earth has received the embrace of the sun and we shall see the results of that love.
Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?
They want us to give up another chunk of our tribal land. This is not the first time or the last time.
I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle.
I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place.
What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.
What white man can say I never stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say that I am a thief.
They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.
Longer Version:
They claim this mother of ours, the earth, for their own and fence their neighbors away; they deface her with their buildings and their refuse. That nation is like a spring freshet that overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path. We cannot dwell side by side.
Strangely enough, they have a mind to till the soil, and the love of possessions is a disease in them.
What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has ever come to me hungry and left me unfed? Who has seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken?
I am here by the will of the Great Spirit, and by his will I am chief.
This nation is like a spring freshet; it overruns its banks and destroys all who are in its path.
The white man knows how to make everything, but he does not know how to distribute it.
Only seven years ago we made a treaty by which we were assured that the buffalo country should be left to us forever. Now they threaten to take that from us also.
Each man is good in His sight. It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.
I was very sorry when I found out that your intentions were good and not what I supposed they were.
In my early days, I was eager to learn and to do things, and therefore I learned quickly.
When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?
Let us put our minds together and see what life we can make for our children.